


The Duality of Man

by annwritesfics



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Eventual Smut, F/M, I just completely forget what happens in hannibal the second I try to write about it, Mentions of Murder, Multi, Profanity, When I say eventual smut I mean I might have to tag this as slowburn, i swear all of this makes sense in my head and hopefully when it’s all typed out, originally written as an oc work but can be read as a female reader insert, tons of that, will update tags as the story progresses
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-05
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:33:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27897604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annwritesfics/pseuds/annwritesfics
Summary: Reader works for Jack Crawford, currently on the Hobbs case. Jack brings in Will Graham and then Hannibal Lecter, resulting in a violent, years-long entanglement none of them anticipated.
Relationships: Hannibal Lecter/Original Female Character(s), Hannibal Lecter/Reader, Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter/Reader, Will Graham/Original Female Character(s), Will Graham/Reader
Comments: 13
Kudos: 65





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> My first like planned out fic! I’m honestly very excited for this just based on my outline and notes for this, so I hope everybody who reads this likes it too. Also the first time I like actually wrote a summary for my story so of course it’s got to be vague as shit. There is just not a lot going on this first chapter but trust me things will happen and I posted it now because if I didn’t I knew I wouldn’t until the whole thing was written and I didn’t want to wait that long.  
> Anyways enjoy!

She didn’t want to admit it, but this made her slightly insecure.

She was big enough to see that they needed help, but it still stung; to be told you weren’t good enough at something you’d been working your entire life for. She still wanted to do it all herself. She wanted to crack the case and get the praise for it; to finally get some of the professional attention that had been withheld from her for various reasons.

But she knew she couldn’t. She knew now that there was no chance of her getting any credit anywhere, because Jack had decided to bring in the big guns. He wanted Will Graham, somebody she knew plenty about, and she knew he was going to get him. Jack was good at getting people to say yes, and even better at getting them to want to.

She knew enough about Graham to know he’d resist. He didn’t like working on big cases because he got too far into it. He didn’t like working on lots of cases because it all got too familiar. But those reasons were also why he was so good at it and why Jack needed him now.

Jack had hit a dead end with this one and so had she. The victims all looked the same, young girls with pale skin and long brunette hair. They’d all been killed in virtually the same way. All that and still they weren’t any closer to suspects or even the ballpark of a motive.

(She had something of a hunch that there was somebody else that this killer really wanted, not any of the girls he’d already killed. But who that might be she did not know. She also did not have enough confidence or evidence to say anything about it to Jack.)

She sat at the table, looking at their board. She tried closing one eye and looking at it, then closing the other and doing the same. Then she closed both of them and tried to see the board and run through the details mentally, hoping that looking at it differently would make something jump out at her.

The phone rang.

She picked it up and recited her usual phone line.

“I got Graham. He’s coming in with me now to see the board. Could you get the file?”

She wasn’t surprised he was coming.

The file was still on the table where she’d left it from last night, so she wouldn’t have to go to much trouble for it. She checked her watch and noted it had only been about half an hour since they got the alert that another girl had been taken that matched the victim type.

“That’s great. I’ll get the file,” and then, slightly quieter, “do you think he remembers me?”

“Oh, he does. I’ve already informed him you work with us now. He asked me how you do.”

She wanted to ask him what he’d said, and maybe he was baiting her into it, but she knew better.

“Okay. Thanks, Jack,” and then she hung up.

She picked up the file and put the loose papers back, making sure they were all squared before closing it and sliding it away from her again.

She could feel her heart starting to pound at the thought of seeing him again. It had been exactly nine years since she last saw him and she could remember everything about him, clear as day. She hoped that, despite their first meeting being when she was a somewhat immature teenager, he could manage to treat her now as an adult. She would hate to work with her hero only for him to treat her like a baby.

(Okay, hero was a strong word. Or, at least, not the right one. She didn’t seem to have the right word.)

She clasped her hands together and leaned back in the chair. God, she was tired. Pulling an all-nighter hadn’t been the smartest idea, and on top of that it hadn’t yielded any new information. She had also slept a few hours in one of the office chairs and now her neck hurt like a bitch, which she supposed she should be somewhat great full for. She would not be dozing off any time soon.

But still, she’d have to get another cup of coffee before they showed up, just in case.

=

She was almost finished with the coffee when they arrived.

The door opened and she nearly spilled it all over the file, but she grabbed the cup just in time and stood up abruptly. Jack walked through the door with Graham behind him. She looked him once up and down then forced herself to look away.

“I believe the two of you have met before,” Jack said, gesturing to Graham and then to her. They both nodded.

“How long ago was that?” Graham asked. She noted a tone of awkwardness in his voice which she did not blame him for.

“Nine years,” she offered. “Right after my father was arrested.”

“Right.”

Jack looked between the two of them then pointed to the board. She turned to it, trying once more to see it in a new way, but once again failing. She hadn’t tried upside down yet, she supposed, but she also supposed she couldn’t very well do that in the same room as Jack and Graham. She was under enough scrutiny as it was without also coming off as a silly child to her own boss.

Graham moved past her and examined the board and she in turn examined him. He looked much the same as he had nine years ago. Perhaps a few more wrinkles, perhaps shorter hair. Glasses now, too. She noted his body language relaxed marginally as he looked at the board. She guessed this part, at least, was familiar territory. She watched his shoulders loosen before once again tightening, at which point he turned to Jack.

“There’s one that he’s really after.”

“What?” Jack asked.

Inwardly, she cursed herself for not saying it first.

“One of these girls is the real target for him. All the others, they’re just surrogates. If he’s killed her already it was his first and he’s reliving the crime. If he hasn’t killed her yet he will, but he’s using the other girls to blow off steam.”

“Using them to hold it in,” she muttered. Then, louder, “but he’s murdered plenty already. If it was a girl he hasn’t killed yet, why not just do it? Why would he have to stop himself from doing it by killing the other girls?”

“That’s a good point,” Jack said. “Why wouldn’t he?”

Graham shook his head.

“That I don’t know. If he hasn’t killed her yet, something is stopping him, even as much as he wants to do it.”

She wondered how he’d drawn that conclusion just from the board. It had taken her the file and some whiskey before the idea of it had come to her.

“Hopefully we can find something in Minnesota,” Jack said, “we’re going to Elise Nichol’s house to talk to her parents. We leave in an hour.”

Wonderful, she thought. In a car with two other FBI agents for however long it took to get from Virginia to Minnesota. She was going to need an ibuprofen. Or a shot of bourbon.

They both nodded and Will left the room. She set the cup down and turned to leave as well, but Jack clicked his tongue at her and she turned back around.

“Don’t compete with him,” he said. “Try to learn from him. There’s a lot he can teach you.”

She didn’t know exactly how to take that, but she understood. Don’t compete with him because she would lose and it would make her look stupid and unprofessional. Try to learn from him because she was good, but he was better.

“I will, Jack.” And she left the room.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for any mistakes, I did write this originally at like ungodly hours in the morning and then I edited it last night, also at ungodly hours and I have trouble with apostrophes specifically for some reason so if there are any out of place or used incorrectly I apologize lmao  
> Anyways, please enjoy! Once again not a whole lot happens this chapter but I’m planning to introduce Hannibal in the next one so shit can happen yknow

As far as she could tell, there wasn’t much to be seen at the Nichols’ house.

She had seen every picture frame, looked at every photo book, heard every memory, but she didn’t see how much it mattered. If it was the Shrike as they assumed, Elise would not be coming back alive, and there wasn’t much they could do about it either except try and understand her killer well enough that they could eventually catch him.

(Though likely not without a few more bodies.)

Jack was talking to the parents in the dining room as Graham studied the framed pictures and she tried to make herself look just as busy. She knew to look busy was better then standing around and doing nothing, especially if you were attempting to upset the family no further.

They were crying. Certainly not unusual given the circumstances, but she still felt a stab of pain in her chest. She could count on one hand the number of times she’d actually gone with Jack to talk to the family, and she wasn’t nearly as used to all the emotions and the desperation as he was. He usually did all the talking because she still had trouble managing emotions. Hers and those of the person she talking to.

She turned to Graham. She didn’t want to bother him because he did look like he was studying the pictures, and hard. But she desperately wanted to add something to this situation, to help, so she figured it would be better to ask forgiveness if she had truly interrupted him than to risk being berated for simply standing around and doing nothing.

(Not that she thought he would berate her for it. Despite her limited knowledge of him, he did not seem like the type to scold.)

“What are you looking for in the pictures?” She asked, whispering so she wouldn’t bother Jack and Elise’s parents.

He didn’t turn to look at her when he answered.

“I’m not looking at the pictures,” he said. “I doubt there’s much to be learned from these pictures. I’m thinking.”

She hoped he would not get angry if she inquired about what. Not that she didn’t mostly know, because of course it would be about Elise, but she wanted to know if there was something specific he had noticed. If there was, perhaps she could use it to develop theories of her own.

“What are you thinking about?”

She thought maybe she sounded stupid and childish. She thought probably she would be up later that night, thinking about and picking apart everything she had done wrong here and everything she could have done better. But he didn’t react as if she were being stupid and childish. When he answered her his tone made her think it had been a completely valid, necessary and respectable inquiry, and so maybe it had been.

“The cat.”

“The cat?”

“Elise was coming home to feed the cat.”

“What’s that got to do with anything besides that we think she was taken on the way?”

“Whether or not she was depends on how the cat was acting. Ask.”

“What?”

“Ask them how the cat was acting when the Nichols’ got home.”

She was surprised he hadn’t asked himself already. But, then again, maybe Jack had personally asked him to help her out, to teach her some things. In addition to his admonishment that she try and learn, of course.

She swallowed and looked him in the eye for the first time in a very long time. She’d avoided it thus far, having noticed during their previous encounters that eye contact was not his favorite thing in the world, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to get a proper read on him now without doing it. She looked him in the eye and searched for any sign of mockery or patronization that might be there. She found none. She looked away as quickly as she could.

The Nichols’ were still crying. Jack was looking at her and Graham, clearly having noticed their conversation, but his expression betrayed nothing of what he thought. She looked quizzically to the Nichols’ and then back to Jack, who nodded.

“How was the cat acting when you got home, mr Nichols?”

God, she felt like an asshole asking that. Here were people crying, devastated at the loss of their daughter. And rightfully so, because their daughter was likely dead already, and there was even a chance they might not see her again if they never found the body. And here she was, asking about the goddamn cat.

“I- what?”

Actually, she didn’t know why she was asking that. Graham had just told her to and she’d done it, because she’d thought he was trying to help her out. A part of her brain yelled that actually, he’d told her to ask to make her look stupid, but she willed that part into silence.

“She asked how the cat was acting when you got home,” Graham offered.

“Fine, I guess. Normal. Why? What has that got to do with Elise?” Mr Nichols’ voice had an edge of hostility to it, which was entirely understandable. She could imagine that if her daughter had gone missing and the people who were supposed to find her asked about the cat, she’d have to do everything in her power to keep from strangling them.

“Elise was coming home to feed the cat, correct? So it stands to reason that if the cat was acting normal, it was fed.”

Yes. Yes, of course. She looked at Graham, almost incredulous. She would have never thought of anything like that.

Elise was coming home to feed the cat, and if the cat was acting normal when her parents got home, it was fed. And if it was fed, that meant-

“Mr Nichols, where in the house is the cat’s food dish?” She asked, sure she was onto the same thing as Graham.

“Elise’s bedroom. What does this have to do with Elise?” Mr Nichols’ tone was gradually moving from slightly hostile to fully aggressive.

“I think we’d better see Elise’s room, Mr Nichols.”

Graham finished for her.

“If the cat was fed, Elise was taken from the house.”

-

The stairway leading to the second floor was creaky and old. She imagined if she set her foot down too hard she might stomp right through a step, so she walked as lightly as she could, following Mr Nichols with Graham behind her. Jack had stayed downstairs with Mrs Nichols, who had become utterly inconsolable at the idea that Elise had been taken from the house.

The hallway leading to Elise’s room was small and dark and too claustrophobic for her liking. She couldn’t make out a lot of details in the hall except hanging pictures here and there, and a door on the right at the end of the hall. The cat, which she had by now become hypothetically familiar with, was scratching at the door. It had already left a myriad of small marks on the wooden door and was working on another set.

She imagined the door had not been opened in quite some time.

“What do you want with her room?” Mr Nichols asked as they reached the door, standing in front of it and growing paler as he did.

This, at least, she knew and could answer.

“If Elise was taken from the house, there might be evidence in her room that may tell us more about when and how she was taken.”

He still looked apprehensive, but Graham behind her nodded at him.

“It’s necessary, Mr Nichols,” he reassured. “It will help to reconstruct the crime and to catch whoever took her.”

She would have to thank him later. She suspected if it had been her alone Mr Nichols would not have opened the room.

As it was, he did, and he stepped inside. And then he made such a noise of shock that she immediately followed, and then so did Graham, and then she was covering her mouth and gasping from the shock.

She took a few seconds to collect herself and then backed up, hands now shaking furiously at her sides because she feared she would go mad without an outlet for the shock of what she’d seen. Graham gave her a strange look but she had nothing to return, so she simply nodded towards the door and walked out of it.

Back through the dark, too-small hallway and back down the old creaky stairs, down into the kitchen where her expression alerted Jack that something had happened.

He apologized to Mrs Nichols but excused himself to the side, where she spoke as discreetly as she could. She did not want to upset Mrs Nichols even more until it was absolutely necessary, or at least until she could hear it from her husband.

“Call Beverley and the rest of the team,” she said. “He put Elise back.”

-

The next time she saw Elise was in the autopsy room.

She’d never been in the autopsy room before, because Jack had never thought she needed to be for a case before. But this time Graham went, and so she did too. She had a feeling that they would be working together more often than either of them had previously expected.

(Well, it was so far less like working together and more like Graham throwing her a bone every now and then so she could feel like she was helping. But she was was determined to change that soon.)

Mentally, she ran over everything she already knew. Beverly had found antler velvet in the wounds. Will had said it was a sign of remorse; that her killer was trying to undo what he’d done.

Remorse. Which didn’t make any fucking sense at all, because there had been no time before when he’d shown remorse for any of the things he’d done to any of the other girls. Which made Elise special, somehow, despite seeming exactly the same as all the others.

But that was why they were here, wasn’t it? To find out what it was that had made him put her back and try to undo the things he’d done. She hoped to god that one of them had found something.

“Well, first of all, we found traces of metal in all the wounds,” Beverly said. “The same metals in all of them.”

“And what are the wounds like?” She asked, because at least she could help narrow down what she’d been impaled with.

“Not like knives. More like he was using a metal pipe that was pointed at the end.”

Which, what could he have done that for, she wondered? It seemed odd to run your victim through in multiple places, only to put her back where you’d got her with antler velvet in the wounds. Unless, of course, it was to psychologically torture her parents. But somehow, she didn’t think that was the case.

“She was mounted,” Graham said suddenly, startling her. She bit back a gasp and looked at him.

“Mounted?” She repeated, trying to goad the rest of it out of him. Not that it was all that necessary to.

“Mounted on metal hooks,” he finished, crossing his arms and leaning against the table behind him.

When he didn’t elaborate any further, Zeller pointed at Elise’s lower stomach.

“Her liver was also removed and put back in. That’s got to be more of that remorse, right?”

Surprise, surprise; more confusing information. She was beginning to think that maybe this killer was doing this with no rhyme or reason. Maybe, she thought, he just liked killing. Maybe there was no motive at all and it was just a coincidence that all his victims looked the same. It would make more sense, she thought, then this clutter of seemingly innocuous details.

(But it wasn’t like that, she knew, because it never was. There was something here to be learned from those seemingly innocuous details, like a needle in a haystack, and if she could somehow find a way to burn the haystack then there the needle would be.)

“Why would he put her liver back?” She asked. “Or even cut it out in the first place?”

Once again, she felt like she was being stupid, but at least this time she could be sure her questions were valid.

“He wasn’t meaning to put it back,” Graham answered. And, okay, that did make sense.

But then he continued, and he sounded sick.

“If he did, it means there was something wrong with the meat.”

Something wrong with the meat.

“She had liver cancer,” Price offered.

Something wrong with the meat.

(She thought again of the needle-in-the-haystack detail. If she were to follow her metaphor all the way through the burning of the haystack, then maybe when the hay was gone and she found the needle it would be too hot to touch and she might regret finding the needle at all if it burned her bad enough.)

Something wrong with the meat.

(So, too, she might not enjoy finding this needle-in-the-haystack detail. She might regret having discovered it at all.)

And, god, she didn’t blame Graham for his tone. She was starting to feel sick, too.

She didn’t want to say it, and she refused to. From a look at Graham she knew they were thinking the same thing, and that neither of them wanted to say it, but he did anyway.

“He’s eating them,” he said, and her stomach churned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally I wrote and was going to keep in the scene in Elise’s bedroom where Beverly interrupts Will while he’s doin his design thing to talk about the antler velvet but it just didn’t really add anything? So, sorry if it seems clunky between when she says Elise was put back and when they’re in the autopsy room. May come back and try to make that cleaner later.


End file.
